Atheist Ireland has obtained figures from the CSO showing the 62 types of wedding ceremonies in Ireland in 2022. They range from Roman Catholic to the Rites of Passage of the Indigenous Wisdom Tradition of Celtic Druid Temple. Only about 44% were some variation of what would currently be considered ...
One in five Irish weddings last year were spiritualist ceremonies, according to information obtained by Atheist Ireland last week. This is twice the number you would think from the published CSO statistics, which hide half of the spiritualist marriages under the label ‘other religious’. This means fewer than 45% of ...
One of the issues that Atheist Ireland raised in our recent meeting with the Catholic Education Partnership was that schools are refusing to comply with the legal requirement to include in their admission policies arrangements for children who exercise their constitutional right to not attend religious instruction classes. Atheist Ireland has ...
Atheist Ireland had a constructive meeting this week with the Catholic Education Partnership, the body that coordinates Catholic education in Ireland. We met in Maynooth with chief executive officer Alan Hynes and chairperson Marie Griffin, and we have arranged a follow-up meeting to further discuss these issues: The right to ...
The Court of Appeal in the Burke case has confirmed that schools and teachers cannot impose the values/ethos of the school on students, if those values are against the conscience of their parents. Schools and Patron bodies believe that under Section 9 (d) of the Education Act they are legally ...
Yesterday the Minister for Education, Norma Foley, introduced the New Primary School curriculum framework. You can find the framework here and frequently asked questions here. This new Framework could mean more time spent on religion in primary schools, not less. Officially, the new curriculum reduces the time spend on the ...
Atheist Ireland has written the following letter to the Minister for Education, Norma Foley TD. Dear Minister, You have recently stressed that parents have a right to ensure that their children can withdraw from the updated sex education course on the basis of conscience. But you have not put the ...
Atheist Ireland has for years been raising the issue of objective sex education with the United Nations. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child included the following in its recent concluding observations about Ireland: Adolescent health (b) Integrate comprehensive, age-appropriate and evidence-based education on sexual and reproductive health into ...
The oireachtas, not the Government or the Department of Education or schools, is responsible for regulating the Constitutional right to not attend religious instruction in schools. That is why statutory guidelines are needed, passed by the Oireachtas, not just Government policies, or circular letters from the Department, or abdication of ...
Katie Levine of Atheist Ireland told RTE's Liveline this week the name of the Irish schoolbook that promoted Catholic theologian and sex abuser Jean Vanier to children. TD Cathal Crowe had recalled the book the previous day but had not named it. It was Alive-O, a Catholic religion book that ...